


i'll cut your bindings

by tosca1390



Category: Spymaster Series - Joanna Bourne
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 22:56:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1281814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trouble is, Annique discovers, is that she doesn’t have anything to <i>do</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll cut your bindings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts).



> Look at me, starting a new fandom on AO3. CHARMING.
> 
> Written for Jess, on the advent of her birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESS. Have some spies.

*

Grey leads her back in the pale blue-grey dawn, his arm wrapped around her shoulder. Annique curls into his side, her body still loose and warm from his touch, from his kiss.

“Did you ask my _grand-pére_?” she asks after a moment. She tips her head back to look at his sharp chiseled jaw. 

Dark slate eyes flicker down to hers. A grin curves his mouth. “Galba? About what?”

“Marrying me.”

He pauses, smoothing his fingertips over her bare shoulder. The loose sleeve of her gown droops over her upper arm. “Should I have?”

“It would be considered proper,” she says dryly. “I am legitimate.”

“Nothing about you is proper, Annique. Part of your charm,” he says, voice low. 

Her cheeks color. They had just made love in a park. Proper is a little out of her reach. Still – 

“Are you concerned he will say no?” she asks archly.

Grey swears under his breath and she cannot help a grin. Exasperating him is entertaining. She thinks she could do it for quite a long time. Cobblestones click under their heels as the milk delivery wagons roll past. 

“I already did,” he admits, voice rough. 

The dawn is rosy and lovely in front of them, sun rising over the city’s roofs. She blinks, staring up at him, and stops just at the corner of Meeks Street. “You did?”

He looks down at her, tilting his head. “A week ago.”

Well. She’s particularly thrown by that. Annique peers up at him, shaking her head. “You knew that early?”

“Didn’t you?” he asks, grinning a little down at her. 

She supposes she did. Perhaps the wanting was there from the first, but she’s certain she’s loved him for almost as long. It’s nice to hear him say it, too. 

“Perhaps,” she says instead, for she likes to tease him. 

His eyes go deliciously dark. “Perhaps?”

Laughing, she rises onto her tiptoes and kisses him. Propriety is a luxury she doesn’t care to indulge in. He is hers, and she wants everyone to know it. “Come, my Grey. You did promise to marry me.”

“That I did,” he says, the joy in his voice unguarded. 

*

“Didn’t think he’d actually go through with it.”

Annique glances at Adrian out of the corner of her eye. “Of course you did,” she says, watching Grey from across the room. The wedding party is a small one; she has no friends here except those who reside in Meeks Street, and Grey counts his friends on one hand. But it is a lively party, with Grey’s immediate family making the trip down from Kent, and Doyle and Maggie’s children joining them at Meeks Street. Their eldest girl, Sevié, looks strangely familiar; a face from the past. Adrian is attentive to her, even moreso than he is to Annique. 

She wants to ask, but holds herself back. Adrian is already tired, pinched at the eyes, slow to recover from his wound. The story behind it hurts even more than the gunshot did, she thinks. 

“Perhaps I did,” he says with a charming slice of a grin. “And perhaps I thought you’d be the one to run.”

Shooting him a dirty look, she smooths her gloved hands over her green silk dress. Galba had spared no expense for her trousseau, claiming it at his right to do so as her grandfather. Of course, he knew little about women’s fashions, so Maggie and Annique did all the actual purchasing. The wedding did not take place that morning, as Grey had so wanted to do; instead, it is a week later, and Annique is a married woman in the eyes of the law and God, though she has felt married to him long before. 

“I ran from him once, brother,” she says to Adrian, watching Grey speak to his mother at the windows of the parlor. “I would not make that mistake again.”

Adrian takes her hand in his for a moment, bringing it to his lips. “He’s a damned lucky man.”

“I hope that on days when I frustrate him endlessly, you or Doyle will remind him of that,” she says lightly, turning her gaze to him. 

“Bet on it,” he says with a catlike smile. Skin and bones and scars, Adrian is; she knows his kind. And the pain that lingers deeply in his gaze cuts her close. His pain could have been hers, if she had been less keen and Grey had been less determined. 

“Get your hands off my wife, Hawker,” comes Grey’s low voice from her left. 

“Just reminding you to take care of her,” Adrian counters with a low laugh, lacking humor. 

“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, and all of you in this room know it,” she says, a little impatiently. Dark curls slip from her careful updo to slide over her bare neck. 

Grey’s hand goes to the small of her back – improperly, if she’s reading the looks of his mother correctly – as Adrian leans into kiss her cheek. “We do,” he says, amused. 

“Go bother Galba,” Grey mutters, though he clasps Adrian’s hand in his for a moment. “We have to talk about your next assignment.”

“Later,” Adrian says, waving his hand with the ease of an aristocrat. A more chameleon-like man she’s never met, except for perhaps Doyle. “You’re on your honeymoon.”

“Honeymoon?” she asks, all ears, as Adrian drifts away to work his charms upon Grey’s mother. “Are we going somewhere?”

Smiling, Grey pulls her close to the broad heat of him. He is a handsome figure in his black waistcoat and stiff white shirt; the severity works for him, even on his wedding day. The green pocket square to match her dress is a sweet touch; she had no real part of it. “It’s more the matter of us not going anywhere.”

“Oh.” She tilts her head back, watching the sharp granite lines of his face. “I like the sound of that.”

“I thought you might,” he murmurs, his fingers stroking the line of her spine, warm through the silk of her dress. 

Before they can escape upstairs, not to come down for god or country, Galba takes her aside in the candle-lit front hall. 

“I am very happy for you,” he says for the third time today, kissing both her cheeks. 

Annique smiles, filled with affection. His love for her is unvarnished and real, she can see it in his eyes. It’s an odd sensation, but it pleases her. She wants to continue to spend time with him, to give him a family they have both been without for too long. “Thank you, _grand-pére_ ,” she murmurs, squeezing his hands. 

There is a house of his, in Cornwall. Apparently, it will be hers, when he passes; he told her as much when he and she and Grey were hammering out the marriage agreements and paperwork, and applying for the special license. Another thing that boggles her about the English – special licenses to be wed? It sounds inane. But there is a house in Cornwall that is Galba’s, and will be hers. He has given her permanence and a home where she had nothing but shadows and displacement; for that, she is eternally grateful. 

But now she has Grey, and Grey is home. What that means for the future, she isn’t entirely certain of yet. 

*

The trouble is, Annique discovers, is that she doesn’t have anything to _do_. 

Being married to Grey is exciting, and calming, and fulfilling, and rather wonderful. But after years of constantly moving, constantly being on the run, constantly avoiding danger, to be contained at home and wholly unexpected to do anything of merit is a strange sensation, and disquieting. Grey does not resign as Head – rightfully so. Once the accurate story of his parentage – and grandparentage, as it is – surfaces, Colonel Reams and Lord Cunningham cannot touch her. Grey’s career is untouched, which belies one of her major concerns. 

But Annique is unused to complacency. She is disinclined to polite entertainments. She has no interest in society – that, both she and Grey share. But as she sits in Meeks Street day after day, with nothing but a library to entertain her, she feels discouraged. She had known that she would no longer be able to be what she was, to be the Fox Cub – but this level of stagnation is frustrating. 

Two months after their marriage, she sits alone with Grey in his study, flipping idly through a book she already knows cover to cover – Moliére, an old favorite – and sighs. 

Grey looks up from his desk, from the papers and files spread out there, and grins a little. “So.”

“Yes?” she asks, keeping her voice light. 

“Are you going to talk to me yet?”

“About what?”

He tilts his head. “About how bloody bored you are.”

A flush starts on her bare throat. It truly is unnerving how well they know each other. “That’s a damning accusation.”

“You’re willingly subjecting yourself to the piano forte. I’m not an idiot, Annique.”

She sets aside her book and leans back on the chaise lounge, plucking at the folds of her blue-sprigged muslin gown uneasily. “It is not that I’m _bored_ ,” she says after a moment, voice measured. 

“But you are,” he says easily, rising from his desk.

“You can’t honestly blame me,” she says, watching as he walks to the closed study door and flips the lock. Interesting. “Adrian’s been sent to Russia and Doyle is back in France and Maggie is busy with her children and – “

“And you were one of the best spies in Western Europe just months ago, and now you’re a properly married lady of means,” he finishes, sitting down beside her. 

She hesitates for only a moment before she drags up her skirts into her hands and shifts herself over to perch on his lap, looking down at his scarred and handsome face. _Hers_ , she thinks with that fierce sense of possession she has slowly gotten used to. _He is hers_. His hands come to rest on her hips, a small smile playing at his mouth. 

“I am unused to living without a purpose,” she says quietly. “To be your wife is an honor and a gift, but it is not my entire life.”

“I know,” he says, stroking his large hands over her ribs. His thumbs brush the bottom curve of her breasts. She shivers. 

Placing her hands on his shoulders, she slides her fingers along the strong line of his throat, his jaw, mapping the nicks and scars she knows so well now. “Do you have any thoughts on a solution, then?” she asks acerbically, despite the thrumming heat of desire edging under her skin. 

He tilts his head, shutting his eyes. Muscles unwind under her touch and she smiles. She likes when he relaxes with her. Her fingers wrap around the nape of his neck and press down into taut skin and muscle, her thumbs light near his pulse. 

“Your talents could be incredibly useful in many ways,” he murmurs, voice slow like honey. “It’s just a matter of reorienting them.”

“A spy on your home territory.”

“Something like,” he says, his hands sliding over her hips and thighs to find the bunched up hem of her skirt. “You’ll notice we haven’t been frequenting society parties and events.”

“I didn’t think it was part of your milieu,” she says, wetting her lips as his hands slide under her skirts. She aches for his touch, for the press of his wide hands between her legs. 

“It hasn’t been. But now that I plan on remaining in the country more often, and with my marriage, these things become important, apparently.”

She strokes along his shoulder blades, edging her hands under the collar of his shirt. “According to your mother?” she asks wryly. Grey’s mother didn’t quite know what to think of Annique, which was fine. But the woman was a stickler for society, even in the countryside of Kent. 

“To her. To Galba,” he says, heavy-lidded eyes flickering open. “And it allows for a different kind of information gathering.”

Her hands still on his shoulders as she peers down at him. “A society spy? How interesting.”

“Underhanded?” His hands move over her stockings and up, finding the slit in her silk drawers and stroking between her thighs. 

Shuddering, she leans down to kiss at his jaw and throat, her hips shifting into the stroking of his fingers against her slick folds. “Inventive. I am a curiosity. Everyone will want to talk to me.”

“And any who see you as a threat will take heed of your appearances,” he says, voice dark. 

She bites at his jaw, stroking her hands through his hair. Two blunt fingers sink into her as his thumb circles her clit and she breathes out a moan. “Bait.”

“Of a kind.” The strange hesitancy in his voice makes her raise her head. She meets stormy eyes. “You can handle it if someone wants you dead.”

“I imagine it will happen sometime,” she says plaintively, her voice shaking as he curves his fingers within her. “I know so much. And despite your checkmate play with Soulier, there will be those who think me too dangerous to leave alive.”

Gaze dark, he leans up to kiss her, his mouth sharp and wanting over hers. She grips into his shoulders hard and pulls him closer, until they are tipping back and she finds herself pinned beneath him, her back to the cushions. 

“I will never let anything happen to you,” he says fiercely, his mouth licking a hot trail down her throat and the exposed skin of her collarbones. 

She runs her hands over his back, feeling the tension in his muscles, trying to soothe him. His fingers stroke between her legs and she shudders with pleasure, love and worry fighting for first between them. “I’m very good at not letting anything happen to me all on my own, Grey,” she murmurs. 

He bites at the curve of her breast, a press of teeth she loves. She bucks into it, skin flushing with want. “You’re not alone in this any longer,” he says huskily. “You have me.”

That she does. She cups his face in her hands and kisses him, as his free hand pushes at his trousers and her skirts, as he tears her drawers with such need that she laughs. When he slides into her, she stills for just a moment, lets the tension between them settle for a time. His mouth curves into a smile against hers and she tunnels her fingers into his hair, keeping him close as she shifts under him. When he moves in her, she shuts her eyes and wraps her thighs around him, holding him as close as she can through layers of muslin and lace and starched cotton. 

Later, with Meeks Street quiet and still and dark around them, he carries her up to their bedroom and undresses with care, stroking his hands all over her skin as if she is something to be worshipped. She had thought it would fade, the want and the love; she is glad she is wrong. 

“Maggie will have to teach me the ways of high society,” she says as he kisses the line of her thigh, stretching out his long broad body between her legs. She drags her hands through his mussed hair, smiling slightly. 

“Oh, she will,” he murmurs, biting lightly at her hipbone. She is ready and wet for him again, astonishingly, but he is taking his time. “She’ll be your partner.”

“Does Maggie have experience in this, other than as Doyle’s wife?” she asks, brushing hair back from his brow. 

Grey sets his chin on her hipbone, fingers playing with the dark curls between her thighs. “Do you remember a French group called Le Fléche?”

“They spirited aristos and others out of France, away from the guillotine during the Terror,” she says, tilting her head. 

“Maggie was the head of that group.”

“You joke with me,” she says, blinking. 

“When have I ever been able to lie to you?” he teases. 

“That is – well,” she says. 

“You’re speechless. My god, I feel as if I should make a note in my diary.”

She scowls at him, this man who is her family and her heartbeat. “She still helps, then?”

“Yes,” he says, beginning to press kisses to her skin as his fingers spread her wide. “Which is why finding you a purpose won’t be difficult at all.”

“I would hate to cause trouble,” she murmurs, breath catching in her throat. 

Dark eyes meets hers, skeptical. “That doesn’t sound like my wife at all.”

“You – oh – “ she moans as his mouth settles between her thighs, his tongue licking up her sex. She arches into the touch and shifts a thigh over his shoulder, dragging her heel over his scarred back. When his tongue finds her clit, she shudders, and loses rational thought for a long time. 

“I love you,” he says into the midnight darkness, tucked up against her as sleep tugs at them both. 

She smiles, sated. “I know.”

A choked laugh, muffled by her dark curls. He presses his face into her hair. “You don’t love me back?”

“Grey, you are absolutely starved for affection. Did you know that?”

“That’s why I married you,” he murmurs, kissing the nape of her neck. 

Sighing, she shifts against him, wrapping her small hand over his larger one as it rests on her belly. “Ah, the truth arises. And here I married you for love.”

“Somehow, I wager we will learn to live with each other,” he says, voice low with the comings of sleep. 

She shuts her eyes and curls into him, lets him hold her close. There is nowhere safer than the circle of his arms, deep in the heart of Meeks Street. 

*


End file.
